Users on ChatGPT’s free and Go plans in the US may now start to see ads as OpenAI has started testing them in the chatbot. The company announced plans to bring ads to ChatGPT. At the time, the company said it would display sponsored products and services that are relevant to the current conversations of logged-in users, though they can disable personalization and “clear the data used for ads” whenever they wish.
“Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “We’re starting with a test to learn, listen and make sure we get the experience right.”
These ads will appear below at the bottom of chats. They’re labeled and separated from ChatGPT’s answers. Ads won’t have an impact on ChatGPT’s responses.
Ads won’t appear when users are conversing with ChatGPT about regulated or sensitive topics such as health, mental wellbeing or politics. Users aged under 18 won’t see ads in ChatGPT during the tests either. Moreover, OpenAI says it won’t share or sell users’ conversations or data to advertisers.
A source close to the company told CNBC that OpenAI expects ads to account for less than half of its revenue in the long run. Currently the company also takes a cut of items bought through its chatbot via the shopping integration feature. Also according to CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told staff on Friday that the company will deploy “an updated Chat model” this week.
The tests come on the heels of Anthropic running Super Bowl ads that poked fun at OpenAI for introducing advertising. Anthropic’s spot asserted that while “ads are coming to AI,” they won’t appear in its own chatbot, Claude.
